


Imbolc

by st_mick



Series: Niffler [51]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Torchwood
Genre: Developing Friendships, Hope & Healing, Made-up ceremony, Pagan celebration, Real Place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 05:34:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21192404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/st_mick/pseuds/st_mick
Summary: Ianto begins the year in a depression, but his friends help him find a way to dig out of it.  As February commences, he is invited to an Imbolc ceremony, celebrating the coming of spring.  Jack, Tosh, and Gwen decide to tag along.





	Imbolc

Jack crashed on Ianto’s sofa and cooked the younger man a New Year’s breakfast the next morning as a thank you for helping him through a night he would normally have spent drinking himself to death in a country B&B, far away from fireworks and New Year’s celebrations.

While it had turned out to be a good start to the new year, it was not enough to keep Ianto from falling into a fairly major depression, before the first week was out. With Luna’s and Susan’s help, Draco had been able to come up with a course that soothed and finally fully healed the inflammation that kept his occlumency from protecting him.

Even so, his own depression was deep, even once they prevented him from feeling the rest of the population’s suffering from seasonal affective disorder. It took a couple of weeks for them to realize that he needed a separate course for his own depression in order to pull him out of the quagmire of hopelessness and despair that he had fallen into.

Jack watched as Ianto struggled, feeling helpless as the younger man grew more distant and withdrawn. They trained four nights a week, and while Ianto seemed to be genuinely trying, Jack could tell he was fighting an uphill battle. Ianto had stopped eating again, and was once more about ten pounds below his optimal, healthy weight. Owen badgered him to the point that he avoided the prickly doctor altogether, which did not help matters.

What rattled Jack was one morning around mid-month, when Ianto showed up late to work, unshaven and wearing the same (now rumpled) suit that he’d worn, the day before. Even the tie was the same. The truly disturbing cap to it all was that the morning coffee was barely drinkable. Everyone was concerned as they watched Ianto’s hunched form slouching down to the archives after serving something that tasted like lukewarm dirty dishwater poured over unground coffee beans.

Recognizing a cry for help when he saw one, and remembering what Ianto had said about wanting to help people, Jack decided that it was time for desperate measures. He would normally fight tooth and claw against letting any of his people know the true extent of the horrors the rift could cause, but he knew that unless he gave Ianto some sort of purpose beyond organizing the archives, the young man would be lost to them. He needed _someone_ to help rather than just _something_ to do.

Ianto recognized that he was just going through the motions, and he cursed his friends for extracting that bloody promise. Most days, it was the only thing that kept him breathing, but he knew that one day soon the scales would tip in the wrong direction, and he simply wouldn’t have the wherewithal to fight it, anymore. 

The only thing he looked forward to any more were his conversations with Jack, but even those were mostly just Ianto sitting and listening to Jack as he told tall tales. Ianto had withdrawn to the point that he participated very little, and he had convinced himself that Jack had not noticed. (He had.) Then Ianto would go home and either do nothing but sleep or not sleep at all. 

His circadian rhythm was completely fucked.

The previous weekend he had slept from the time he got home at eight o’clock on Friday evening until he forced himself from his bed at six o’clock on Monday morning. He passed out on his way to the kitchen, and ate a slice of cheese when he came around, hoping he could keep it down and that it would keep him from falling over, at work.

It mostly worked.

One night later that week, he sat in the dark in front of the fire and only when the sun came up did he rouse himself to head back in to work. He didn’t even bother changing, confident no one would notice that he was unwashed and unkempt. That evening Luna and Draco were waiting for him when he got home. 

Jack had told him to be prepared for an excursion the next morning, and he had left the hub earlier than normal to come home and wonder what to do until he could go back to the hub. His friends took him in hand, shoving him into his bathroom and telling him to shower while they fixed him a meal and then hauled in a case of water spiked with potions for him to drink.

They extracted a promise that he would drink the potions and give himself a chance to heal before trying to kill himself through apathy and starvation. They found it telling that even though he called it extortion, there was neither energy nor heat behind it. He ate what they fed him, drank the potions they gave him, and then fell into a deep, healing sleep.

***

The next day represented a new beginning for Ianto. It was the first day of a healing course of potions that would help Ianto climb out of the depression he’d fallen into. It was also the day that Jack took him to Flat Holm, for the first time.

They met for coffee and breakfast, and Jack quietly explained about the negative rift spikes. The rift brought many things to Cardiff, but it also took people away, sometimes. And those few who returned were rarely physically, mentally, or emotionally intact. He explained Torchwood’s dubious history of dealing with victims of the rift, and what he had done since taking over Three.

Ianto listened carefully to Jack and on the boat ride to the island he focused on shoring up his shielding. They were still two miles out when he began to feel the disturbances. It took all of his focus to ensure his mind was protected from the pain of those on the island. 

In the end, it was precisely the exercise Ianto needed to restore the habit of keeping his vigilance. The damage from reading the Cyberman after it had taken over Lisa’s mind had made it difficult to maintain his protection, and so he had fallen out of the habit of doing so. But having Jack hand him the responsibility for helping keep the island maintained ensured he would have to re-establish his practice.

Jack introduced Ianto to Helen, and the two gave the younger man a complete tour of the facility. Helen showed Ianto the books, introduced him to all of the residents, and gave him a comprehensive list of what was needed in order to optimize the running of the facility. 

Jack had established and staffed the place, but his duties as the head of Torchwood made it difficult for him to oversee the facility with the eye to detail that would make it all it could be. This was in no way a criticism of Jack’s responsibility and care; it was merely the reality of the extent of his strengths. He was the big picture thinker. He came up with the idea and established the place. And he now envisioned Ianto executing that vision far more thoroughly than he could.

Ianto was not traumatized by the mere knowledge of the facility, as Jack had feared. In fact, he took it in stride to a degree that almost disturbed Jack. But Ianto had cut his teeth on visits to Providence Park when he was only five years old. And the wards of St. Mungo’s were filled with cursed witches and wizards whose condition rivaled some of these rift victims.

So yes, Ianto took it in his stride, speaking to each resident with friendliness and compassion, and the thought of _there but for the grace of the gods and goddesses_… He frowned, not certain where that thought had come from, only that he knew he’d somehow narrowly escaped the same type of damage that plagued these people.[1]

It was a thought his mind shied from, and he did not have the strength to pursue it.

***

Ianto threw himself into the project Jack had entrusted to him – modernizing Flat Holm and making it more homely and comfortable for its staff and residents. Helen already loved him, and sent Jack grateful emails practically every other day. Within two weeks he seemed to have turned a corner, of sorts. 

He was chatting with Toshiko on the morning of February first, when Jack bellowed through the hub, “Ianto! I don’t see you on the work roster tonight or tomorrow, and we’re meant to train one or both of those days. What idiot scheduled you to be off?”

“That would be you, Sir,” Ianto replied politely, eliciting a guffaw from Owen and giggles from Tosh and Gwen. “I asked several weeks ago.”

Jack frowned. He vaguely remembered Ianto asking, but he hadn’t paid attention to which days. He bounded down the stairs to take the coffee Ianto had been about to bring him. “Big plans?” he asked.

Ianto blinked. He was working hard on being more open. He supposed there’d be no harm in answering. “It’s Imbolc, Sir.”

“Im-what?” Owen asked.

Jack was staring at Ianto. He’d caught the hesitation, and seen the decision to share. He gave Ianto a small smile before answering Owen for him. “It marks the mid-point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.”

“Are you Wiccan, Ianto?” Gwen asked.

Ianto self-consciously straightened his tie. “No. More an unclassified pagan, really,” he answered.

“And there’s a celebration this evening?” Jack asked, curious. Ianto had never mentioned his spiritual leanings, though he had seemed very much at home when Jack had called on the elementals for the naming ceremony.

Again a tiny hesitation. Jack felt an almost giddy sort of bubbling in his chest that Ianto was choosing to share something of himself with them. It was the first step to rebuilding trust among the team, and they clearly wanted to know more about him, as well. 

“There’s an invocation of the goddess in Glastonbury tonight. I,” he hesitated again, then took a breath. “I’ve been invited to sing the hymn of invocation.”

“Wouldn’t have thought you’d be one to go in for religion and gods and goddesses, Tea Boy,” Owen said, though it wasn’t a derisive comment.

Ianto shrugged. “I’ve seen enough to not have the hubris to claim that I know what is truth. There may or may not be gods and goddesses, but for me, they point to something real, something sacred.” For Ianto, the face of the goddess, this particular goddess, was the face of his magic. And there was nothing more sacred to him.

Owen nodded, seeming to understand the sentiment. Ianto chose not to be surprised that the doctor understood sanctity. He looked at Jack, who was eyeing him closely. “Glastonbury, you say? The Chalice Well?”

Ianto snickered. “No. There is an altar to Brigid at the White Spring.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. In his mind’s eye he’d already made up a story of some people gathered around the red spring, lighting candles and singing softly. In Jack’s experience, the white spring crowd was a bit more… earthy. “I haven’t heard that pronunciation, before.”

Ianto had mentioned the goddess Brigid, pronouncing the name, Brig-eed, with a hard ‘g’. The younger man shrugged. “Most call her Bridgid or Bridget. Or even Bhrid, Brede, or Bride. My experience of her is one of her more ancient forms.”

“Before the Church got ahold of her?”

“Indeed.”

“And what does she represent?” Toshiko asked.

“Fertility,” Jack grinned, but regretted the quip as Ianto flinched. Too late he remembered Ianto theorizing one night that perhaps Eleanor had been conceived on Imbolc, the year before. “Sorry,” he muttered, and Ianto nodded with a small smile.

He cleared his throat. “To me, she represents the flame of creativity, poetry, song, and divination.” 

_Magic_.

“How would you feel about some company?” Jack asked on a whim, and Ianto’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Oh, could we join you, Ianto?” Tosh asked. “It sounds fascinating.” Her own eyes widened. “I don’t mean that disrespectfully. It’s just, I’ve never seen any sort of pagan ceremony, and what you just said reminded me of what Joseph Campbell said about signposts, and how they often become confused with what they point to.”

Ianto smiled. “No offense taken, Tosh. Maybe you can hold my things, while I sing the hymn.”

“Of course,” she beamed, and Jack caught a spark of mischief in Ianto’s eyes.

“Gwen, Owen?” Jack asked.

“I’m on the roster here tonight, remember?” Owen said. “Doesn’t sound like my scene anyway. But I’ll hold the fort, if you all want to go.”

Gwen shrugged a shoulder. “Sure. Rhys’ Presbyterian mother would have a kitten, but that’s really just another reason to check it out,” she grinned.

“Sounds good,” Jack beamed. “What time should we head out?”

“Eight should give us plenty of time,” Ianto replied. He pulled out his phone as he headed for the archives so he could warn his friends of the impending muggle invasion of their ceremony. He didn’t think it would be a problem; there were always curious muggles at these events. But these particular muggles needed to be kept in the dark.

***

Jack was surprised there were no issues finding a place to park as they found a spot a few dozen yards up the road from the old Victorian pump house that housed the white spring. “Where is everyone?” he wondered.

“Probably parked on the far side of the Tor and climbed over, as part of their evening,” Ianto quickly supplied. It helped that the path from the Tor was just a few dozen yards from the pump house.

“I just love Glastonbury,” Jack smiled, taking a deep breath. “Everyone so open minded and willing to get along.”

Ianto smiled. “It is a bit of an oasis, in that respect,” he agreed. “Shall we?” He offered one elbow to Toshiko, and the other to Gwen. 

He did not think too deeply on the motivation for keeping Gwen off of Jack’s arm.

He was just being polite.

Really.

As they entered the pump house, the first thing Jack, Gwen and Toshiko noticed was the lack of lighting. There were candles everywhere, but there were no electrics. The second thing was the water standing on the floor, and the cold, damp atmosphere.

“It’s freezing in here,” Gwen shivered.

“Nif!” Luna ran up and gave him a hug. She nodded to the others before turning back to her friend. “Thank you so much for doing this,” she smiled. “I think it will help, and your voice is so rich – it’s perfect for this.”

Ianto’s ears pinked at the compliment and he dipped his head. “Thank you for asking me. I had thought about foregoing it this year, but…” he looked around, nodding. “It feels right, to be here.”

Just then, an older witch stepped forward and let everyone know that if they wished to participate, they should prepare to do so, now. Those who had come to watch were welcome to do so, from beyond the ropes that cordoned off the spring.

Toshiko took it all in. Directly opposite the door – and in front of them – was the pool fed by the spring. There were chambers to the left and to the right, each giving access to the rounded pool in the center. The chamber to the left included the altar (located along the same wall as the door), surrounded by branches and decked out for the celebration. Opposite was a sort of staggered set of stones that looked almost like stair steps, but they led nowhere. There was just a wide sort of ledge.

“Well, that’s our cue, I think,” Luna smiled. She walked away, disappearing into the crowd in the right chamber.

“I’ll be right there,” Ianto called after her. He faced Tosh. “You sure it’s okay that you hold my things?” he asked.

“Of course, Ianto,” Tosh answered, smiling.

She blinked several times, and Gwen gaped and Jack grinned as Ianto balanced on his left foot and took off his right trainer, then the sock, stuffing the sock into the shoe. He then did the same with his left trainer, careful not to get either sock wet. He handed Toshiko his shoes, then pulled off his coat.

“Ianto, you’ll freeze,” Gwen protested.

“I’ll hold your coat,” Jack grinned, having figured out what the requirements were of moving beyond the cordon.

Ianto smiled and pulled off his jumper, shirt, and vest, standing before them in only his jeans. Tosh sputtered as he proceeded to pulling those off, as well.

“Thanks, Tosh,” he smiled. “You wouldn’t believe how many jumpers I’ve lost at these events.

“Wha…” Tosh sputtered again as he turned and padded off, wearing only his pants.

“Jack?” Gwen looked at Jack, who was following Ianto’s progress through the crowd. He spoke to his friends, all of whom were discarding their clothing into a giant heap on a dry patch of floor in the chamber to the right.

“This side of the cordon is clothing optional, I’d say,” Jack grinned again. “I imagine the other side does not offer an option.”

The next they saw him, Ianto had discarded his last item of clothing and climbed unselfconsciously onto the third step / ledge, facing the wall. Luna stood beside him, their pale skin practically glowing in the candlelight. Her hair was cascading down her back, and Tosh was reminded of the tale of Lady Godiva.

“I thought he was shy,” Gwen said, doing her best not to ogle her co-worker’s backside.

Jack openly ogled. “Professional reserve isn’t the same as shyness,” he pointed out. He was rather pleased to see this distinction in his archivist. And holy hell, did the man have a beautiful arse, if a bit too skinny, still. Even so, Jack was glad of Ianto’s coat.

In the next moment, an almost other-worldly sound arose, and they were slow to realize that it was the sound of Ianto’s voice, bouncing off of the walls as the perfect acoustics of the chambers amplified and broadcast his song. 

“His voice,” Tosh whispered, feeling tears well up at the beauty of the moment.

Jack felt the power of the invocation, and he was surprised. He did not normally feel such things, though he respected that they happened. He was inclined to believe it was some sort of energetic dynamic of a crowd in an enclosed space, particularly with so much moisture to conduct any sparks of whatever.

As Ianto continued the song, with Luna providing the occasional harmony, those in attendance stepped, one by one, into the pool. They stepped in from the left chamber, knelt down, and immersed themselves before making their way to the front of the pool and climbing out. Each was handed a towel before proceeding to the older woman, who stood to the right side of the center chamber with a goblet. After having a sip of what Jack assumed to be warm mulled wine, they proceeded past her to dry off and dress.

There were about fifty people in attendance, and about a dozen of them were Ianto’s school friends. It took about an hour, and Ianto sang, the whole time. It was beautiful and mesmerizing and there was a buzzing in the air that was exhilarating.

As the last person in line moved towards the pool, they pressed a hand to Luna’s ankle. As that person emerged from the pool, she climbed down from her perch and plunged into the pool, herself. Ianto kept singing as Luna wrapped herself in a towel, drank, dried off, and dressed. Then she took the goblet, and the woman presiding disrobed and moved to the left chamber. 

She brushed Ianto’s ankle before stepping into the pool. When she emerged, she drank, dried, and dressed. Then all of the others gathered around the pool and lifted their voices to join in Ianto’s song. 

After they sang through the first time, Ianto stepped down and into the pool. He knelt in the frigid water and finished the hymn, then dipped backwards into the water as the others continued to sing. Jack began to get nervous as Ianto stayed under longer than anyone else had. But as the hymn completed again, he resurfaced, and the hymn began its final cycle.

Ianto looked incandescent as he stepped from the pool. Luna handed him a towel (and Jack was far too polite to allow any commentary on just how cold the water must have been) and he was handed the cup, which had been refilled. He drank it all, finishing it as the hymn finally concluded.

The older woman (priestess?) bowed to him, and he returned the bow, then Luna hugged him, followed by his friends. It was a fairly quiet affair, as no one was willing to break silence or disturb the energy generated by the ceremony.

Ianto slowly made his way to the left chamber, where he retrieved his pants and dried himself enough that they were not sticking to him when he returned to the center chamber, rubbing the towel vigorously against his hair. 

He looked around, and then found Toshiko. He gave her a stunning smile and quickly began to dress. Up close, he looked a bit blue, from the cold. Still no one spoke; no one wished to break the bright, beautiful, sacred silence.

Once he put his socks and shoes on, he looked around and found Luna and his friends and gave them all hugs, then came back and let Jack help him into his coat. They left the pump house and headed for the SUV. Jack turned the heat up and Tosh handed Ianto the thermos that he’d packed, earlier.

He was not shivering, and Jack was vaguely concerned about hypothermia, but he resolved to have Owen look the younger man over when they returned to the hub. At a stoplight on the way out of town, he pulled off his greatcoat and draped it over Ianto, who looked as though he was about to nod off.

No one spoke until they reached the M5. Then, it was as though a dam had burst. “Ianto, that was so beautiful!” Toshiko gushed. “Your voice is amazing!”

“Thank you,” he croaked. “But I think it’s the acoustics, more than any talent on my part.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Jack glanced away from the road and gave him a smile.

“Are you all right?” Gwen asked. “You sang for a long time without a break, but it was also freezing in there.”

“I’m fine, thank you,” he smiled back at Gwen.

“So, you came out of the water looking like you’d had some sort of inspiration,” Jack said. He didn’t want to pry, but he was too curious not to.

Ianto leaned his head back and smiled. He burrowed down into Jack’s coat and closed his eyes. “Found something I thought I’d lost,” he said quietly.

Jack looked over at Ianto, and he noticed that the younger man looked absolutely radiant. Whatever he’d experienced, Jack hoped he could hold onto some small part of it, but he was concerned that Ianto would come crashing back down from some artificial high and be worse off than he’d been, before.

As happened so often, Ianto was able to follow Jack’s train of thought. “I’m under no illusions that this feeling will last, but I haven’t felt anything close to joy since…” he trailed off. “Think I’ll just enjoy this feeling while it lasts, and then when it’s over, at least I know that I’m still capable of feeling it.”

“Is that what you thought you’d lost?” Jack asked. He could tell that Toshiko and Gwen were staying quiet because it was such a personal conversation, for Ianto.

Ianto turned his head and looked out of the window for a few moments before his eyes fluttered shut. Jack gave up on getting an answer as Ianto drank the last of his coffee and put the thermos down, once more snuggling down into Jack’s coat. 

“That day,” he whispered, “it swamped my senses. Everything’s been muted, since then. Offline,” he glanced back at Tosh, who gave him a weak smile. “Like a sort of psychosomatic neuropathy. It may have been a fluke, but it felt like I sort of got rebooted, tonight.”

“You going to be okay if that’s not what it was?”

Ianto shrugged. “As okay as I’ve already been. I’m no worse off, really. And like I said – at least I know I still _can_ feel these things.”

“Ianto, can you tell us about the ceremony?” Tosh asked.

The rest of the ride, Ianto quietly explained how the ceremony was about surrendering to the cold of winter, ready to emerge to face the coming spring. 

“You stayed under longer than anyone else,” Jack observed.

“Maybe I had more to surrender to,” Ianto shrugged.

Jack realized the symbolism of the act. Ianto had deliberately stayed under for the duration of the hymn, to signify that he had faith that spring would come again. “It’s about hope,” he smiled.

“It is,” Ianto returned his smile.

***

[1] To paraphrase John Bradford

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so. Glastonbury is an amazing place. There are two springs there that are fed from a source under the Tor - the red (iron rich) spring is where the Chalice Well is located, and it is very lovely and there are gardens and there's a sense of organization - and a charge for admission. 
> 
> The white (calcium rich) spring is, as described here, much earthier (complete with nude bathers). It is as described, located in a Victorian pump house that is actually quite lovely. It is manned by volunteers with a donation box sitting under the volunteer's chair. Brigid's altar is located in the left chamber.
> 
> Imbolc is also as described - a Gaelic festival, also called Brigid's day.
> 
> I completely made up the ceremony, though, so bear with me, on that one. Hopefully I captured the spirit of the thing, though.
> 
> This one was a bit random, and surprised me when it came through. Hope you like it.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
